Producer Scott Rudin reveals to Deadline that “we’re pretty close” to pinning down a director for his mega-high-profile Sony Pictures 3D movie Cleopatra starring Angelina Jolie and based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Stacy Schiff’s biography Cleopatra: A Life. Rudin isn’t spilling but we hear that the filmmakers “like the idea” of the much respected Paul Greengrass although his name hasn’t even been mentioned yet to Angie who’s attached. Greengrass, who helmed the most recent two Bourne franchise action thrillers as well as Green Zone and United 93. He also flirted with doing the 3D Fantastic Voyage for producer James Cameron, who himself flirted with directing the 3D Cleopatra for Rudin. Love it when these things come full circle. We’re obsessed with this project and think Greengrass would be an intriguing hire, perhaps less about spectacle and more about story. “Smart, tough, political, hard-nosed…,” an insider described the director to Deadline. “Sort of the idea of Cleopatra in the book.” Not a bad thing considering that the last time Hollywood tried that subject of Cleopatra on a grand scale, back in 1963, it nearly bankrupted 20th Century Fox.

So why will this version fare better? “It is a completely revisionist Cleopatra, a much more grown-up sophisticated version,” Rudin recently told Mike Fleming. “She’s not a sex kitten, she’s a politician, strategist, warrior. In the Joseph Mankiewicz movie, Elizabeth Taylor is a seductress, but the histories of Cleopatra have been written by men. This is the first to be written by a woman. It felt like such a blow-the-doors-off-the-hinges idea of how to tell it, impossible to resist. We’re pretty close. A lot of directors want to do it, but there is only a handful we’ll make it with.” Of course, Cameron was seriously discussing Rudin’s pic before taking that huge deal at Fox to direct the two Avatar sequels. Did Rudin feel leveraged? “No,” he tells Fleming. “I’ve been a good friend of Jim Cameron’s since I was the executive on Aliens. I got promoted because of my relationship with Jim Cameron and the guy’s been a seminal figure in my career. I never for one second thought we were being leveraged. I fully expected Fox to make the play they did, to make sure he didn’t do Cleopatra. I wasn’t surprised when they did.”

Rudin, who acquired the Schiff book, is producer. Deadline has had the scoop on this project all along, from Cameron’s interest, to Jolie anxious to make the movie, to Sony Pictures Entertainment Co-Chair Amy Pascal deciding to fast-track this PG-13 and 3D Cleopatra after screenwriter Bran Helgeland wrote what is being described as a “brilliant script deserving of epic treatment” about the “greatest female heroine” and “what the Romans took from Egypt”. Sony has been hoping for a start date in 2011 and readily acknowledges that the pic “won’t be cheap”. In fact, Pascal is calling this her Gone With The Wind epic. Indeed, a project of this size and scope is a huge risk for any studio, especially considering how much attention will be focused on the production and the last time Cleopatra was made into a movie with a starting budget of $2 million budget that ballooned to $44 million (the equivalent of over $300 million today) not the least because Taylor became ill and almost died. Still, the production was that year’s highest grossing pic with $26 million.

99 Comments

Neil • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Intriguing. Before anyone else blathers on about 3D, this is what the industry has been waiting for; a non-cg-centric film done in 3d. This could be the next breakthrough for 3d. Of course everyone will be waiting for everyone on board this project to fall flat on their face. Angie and Mr. Greengrass doing this version of Cleo? Sounds like money to me.

Film Fan • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

This version, too, deserves at least $300 million to do it justice. And worth it. But please don’t throw the “sex kitten” out with the bath water. Besides, we all know that politicians and sex are like peanut butter and jelly… slathered all over.

TedTheodoreLogan • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

This vanity project won’t do well.

Yama • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

If it’s going to be female centered, then a female director would be appropriate. Kathryn Bigelow would be the perfect choice to me.

Anonymous • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

That’s exactly why they won’t hire her. Sad but true.

Waiting for the collapse • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

yes let’s see if we can get it down to literally zero box office

make the whole thing a massive tax write-off

HW • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Uh…have you SEEN Bigelow’s movies? “Hurt Locker?” “Point Break?”

Look at her body of work. She shouldn’t go anywhere near this project. But because she has a vagina she’s the “perfect choice?” Makes no sense at all.

Jeff • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Because it’s “female-centric,” a woman should direct? Isn’t that exactly the kind of lame, stereotypical thinking that Bigelow’s Oscar win for a tough, male-driven action movie like “The Hurt Locker” helped dispel? It’s about the director, not the gender.

addison • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Cleopatra as a character is unforgettable. Hurt Locker is very forgettable. So no to Bigelow.

Jon • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Everyone get off of their high-horses. Cleopatra transcends genders, and that is part of what makes her so special. Sure, she is a woman, but since pretty much EVERYTHING of what we know about her comes from masculine sources; does anyone really think that having a female director matters for anything? If you think that, then you need to stop giving your input. Sure, Cleopatra’s story is a woman’s story, but it’s not something like Rosa Parks, where a female perspective is valid because we have a reliable historical opinion. Any female injection into this production will be just as flawed and subjective as a male’s. I certainly hope this production will allow for female empowerment in the character, but please, please do not get caught in the trap of thinking that Katherine Bigelow can make Cleopatra any more authentic. She can’t. This will be, and always has been (due to the nature of historical records, sorry) a masculine story, and any attempts to make it “feminist” will be just as inauthentic as any other attempt.

JoshP • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Angelina Jolie and mega hit don’t make me laugh.

joe • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

yea , but a lot also depends on who are playing Marc Anthony & Ceasar too. She won’t carry this on her own

Done • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

What, make this movie already, talk about epic! we are all craving with a picture that is not about aliens, butt cracks and fast moving objects. Give us good dialogue, debate, good fierce loving while showing history at the same time.

taxPAYER • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

“Give is good dialogue, debate, good fierce loving while SHOWING HISTORY AT THE SAME TIME? Showing history. And AFRICAN queen, played by Angelina Jolie. Um, ok.

ety3 • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Cleopatra was Greek/Macedonian. Not African.

taxPAYER • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Cleopatra was Egyptian and had Macedonian roots through her father. Greece was not occupied by Macedonia at the time, so she was not at all Greek.

Nurf? • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Actually, Cleopatra was not African, she was Macedonian, so neither Jolie nor a black actress would be historically correct (not that anybody cares, really)

In 2008, archeologists uncovered what may very well be a bust of Cleopatra (link @ sig), which would put her in line with typical Greek features at the time, despite the fact that she was hailed as an Egyptian “goddess”.

However, public perception of Cleo is largely based on the Elisabeth Taylor performance and look, which may be seen as a testament of how powerful imagery can be in the cultural arena, spawning pretty much every other Cleo performance since that 20th Century Fox debacle.

Sketchbook • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

The bust is the least of (t)its.

Teddy • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Cleopatra was Greek you moron

joe • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Cleopatra wasn’t African. She was a Ptolemy – Greek

terry • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

(Sigh…) Please read your history books. Cleopatra was not black. At the most she may have been mixed due to her Greek family dynasty’s reign over Egypt for so many years.

In any event, other than Jolie, I can think of no other actress at this time that command a screen or play serious dynamic female characters, as she can.

No disrespect, Josh P, but she is the most sought-after actress and is the highest or one of the top highest selling female actresses, for a reason. Like her or not.

Anonymous • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

I’m sure Greengrass can do political intrigue just fine, but can he do grand spectacle? If this film is going to make bank, it needs more than just togas and papyrus scrolls. It needs sweeping epic battles and scenary. Not convinced Greengrass can serve that us.

anon • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

you never saw the film that got Paul his break in the business Bloody Sunday huh?

It's_A_Fact • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Paul Greengrass? sheesh, talk about overrated SOS who got lucky.. any of you so called fans seen his earlier stuff? – utter fucking trash. The only thing he knows how to do is move the camera around like a spaz..

Heck, I’d take Soderbergh or Fincher over him for this project

Paul • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Very risky. I’m not sure Greengrass is up to a project of this scale, and his most recent effort Green Zone doesn’t inspire much confidence…

I hope this pans out well though, love Jolie. The most concerning thing in this article is “PG-13″. Why does Sony keep doing that with Jolie pics? Salt, Tourist, now Cleopatra? All movies that could benefit from an R rating.

Loma • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

If you’re gonna pour at least 200 million into a pic these days, you can’t go with an R rating. No studio would touch that with a 10 foot pole. Granted, there are some benefits from making this an R rated pic as far as story are concerned…but I think they could do this justice with a PG-13.

Keep It Sexy • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

As much as I love a good BC historical, political thriller (not), how are they going to have a movie starring Angelina Jolie as Cleopatra and not keep it sexy? Definitely keep it as historically accurate as possible and detail Cleopatra’s strength and power but PLEASE, she slept w/ Julius Ceasar AND Mark Antony. Are they not going to show that?? And please, please cast hot actors in both those roles.

Val • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Jolie couldn’t even make $300M with Salt and that’s the only genre she’s profitable in. Jolie can’t act, have you seen The Tourist? They only think she can do is an action film where she has the stunt double to do most of the stunts. Amy Pascal is dreaming if she thinks this can do $300M. This will be worse than The Tourist and even Alexander.

Hasbeen Aniston • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Per Box Office Mojo, Salt had a worldwide theatrical box office of $293,502,218, nearly triple its production budget. And in case you hadn’t heard, we have a little something called “ancillary revenue” from things like global television licensing fees, dvd and blueray sales, and anything else from which a dollar can be wrung. Try as you might, you can’t claim Salt, a film which Jolie carried SOLELY on her own, will not be a long-term moneymaker, licensed and re-licensed in foreign television markets for years to come. To Jennifer Aniston’s, Stephen Huvane’s and Chelsea Handler’s collective dismay, Jolie will continue to reign as the biggest female star in the world for the next few years. Cleo will only add to her lustre.

terry • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Thank you. Your comments are on point.

Paul • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Box Office isn’t Film Rentals. More than half the BO stays at the exhibitors. The remainder comes back to the distributor in film rentals. So, your $293M is really $140M give or take.

Production cost doesn’t include Prints and Advertising. Usually, the studio will spend $35M on P&A, but on a big Anjolie movie, you will have to spend more to pacify her sycophants – say $50M. So when you add that to the $110M to make Salt, you are at $160M outlay against $140 in film rentals. You are still in the hole.

You are right that this doesn’t factor in licensing fees and DVD sales, but I wouldn’t bank too much on DVD sales. But that “little something” is quite little. It might actually be too little to cover the loss on theatrical for Salt.

Last, what does Jennifer Aniston have to do with Salt? Is that some TMZ thing that I missed while reading books?

James • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Wrong again.

We will never know the EXACT revenue that goes back to a studio from the theaters. But I’ll take your total $160m costs production and marketing. It’s pretty well documented that studios get back 90% of box office in the first week. That’s standard. It goes down from there, and in overseas markets it’s all over the place. The best general guesstimate is to say that studios retain about 55% of global box office. In Salt’s case that gives the studios $161.5m from the theaters. Right there the movie has at least broken even.

Now we talk about licensing and DVDs/BDs. A week before release the cable rights were sold to FX for 12% of domestic box office. $118m later, that’s $14m straight to Sony. A couple week’s ago the DVD was released. Between DVD and BD the movie sold approximately 1,000,000 copies in its first week. I have read that the after the retail and physical costs, the studios get $10-$12 per disc as profit. So there’s, estimated, another $11m in the first week. If the movie sells another 1-2m discs that’s anywhere from $20-30m more revnue for the studio. Let’s be conservative and say the DVD/BD in the end hand back $30m of profits.

Right now we’re at $44m profit and that’s just from the numbers that are released to the public. That hasn’t even taken into account the fact that Salt has been #1 on the rental chart for the past 2 weeks- I don’t know how much money a studio gets from that. Add to that however much HBO pays for it. Netflix. And not to mention, probably most lucrative of all, global television licensing. Sony will sell the rights to this movie in countries all over the world. And while we’re on the subject of global revenues- there’s also the DVD/BD sales worldwide. Who even knows how much that will bring in?

Basically your argument is trash. After breaking even on a huge budget in theaters, the ancillary markets provide nothing but $$$$ big time profits for Sony. I’d say $100m MINIMUM when all is said and done. Probably more. That right there is enough for them to produce Cleopatra.

Katherine M. • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Salt would have easily made over $300 mil if it had played in China. That missing market certainly denied it the $300 mil BO mark. I also think studios should think twice about these slow roll out openings in foreign markets. Salt was heavily pirated overseas.

Why are you denying Jolie’s stunt activities? Is this deliberate misinformation or just ignorance? Jolie did almost all her stunts in Salt. It’s pretty easily documented.

Stacy Schiff’s new Cleopatra book offers a fascinating history of this historical figure. Her research and interpretation reveals a much more interesting person than the typcial sexist lore. Not sure how interested the general public is in history but I know I am.

Vino • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Pascal’s swan song. “Amy, dunt doodit.”

AC • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

I know the town is littered with Scott Rudin assistants who have been thrown into insane asylum’s, but when you read how Scott Rudin breaks down the business as it related to Cameron and Fox, his perspective is sophisticated and real world. Seems anytime I see a good movie, it has Scott Rudin’s name on it. He’s a producer of the highest order and with an aesthetic many aspire to and few achieve.

Sid • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Nailing the political aspect seems to be the most important part of the equation and Greengrass can handle that better than most. But the point is well taken that he has never produced a grand spectacle before — but then neither had Peter Jackson before tackling Lord of the Rings.

JOHNS • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Paul Greengrass is a visionless hack. People get sick enough watching his films in 2D.

Eric • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

@ Done, you’re not going to get any of that with Angelina Jolie and yes this will fall flat on it’s face. For the most part 3D is a crutch for piss poor film making.

roger • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

I like that photo of Greengrass. Is that how he intends to deal with Jolie?

De Nile • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

“Marie Antoinette” was a revisionist ‘take’ on a gal who
lost her head; it lost at the b.o. Enough with exotic Qvueens.

Anonymous • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

are you talking about the Sofia Coppola film? well duh…

Waiting for the collapse • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

this is gonna be such a huge bomb, the writing is all over it

ep • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Greengrass is a great director to be sure, but if it’s Cleo and it’s in 3D and it’s Jolie, doesn’t the film deserve someone who has an incredible command of their visuals and composition? Most all of Greengrass stuff is handheld all of the time, which works with his material, but can he handle a large canvas and production value like this? If the script is that strong, wouldn’t someone like Terence Malick (yeah far out right?) be more appropriate – someone whose visuals are just unrivaled.

ep • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

I’m sorry to chime in again, but I LOVE the idea of a female director, but again, someone whose visuals are stunning – to me JANE CAMPION or JULIE TEYMOR would be ideal – not bigalow, biglaow is literally the female version of greengrass.

HW • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Listen, if everybody followed your “Girls should make girl movies and boys should make boy movies” philosophy, then Peter Berg would have made “Hurt Locker” and K. Bigelow probably wouldn’t be making movies at all.

well I can’t live with the loss of a minor Iraq war movie, thank god this nightmare scenario you’re painting never came to pass

3Dwillnotsaveyou • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

This is fantastic news!

The last time they tried this dumbass idea it nearly crushed the studios and helped usher in 70’s New Hollywood. Maybe raising this bloated turd from the dead means we’re on the precipice of something great…

jesse • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

“… but the histories of Cleopatra have been written by men. This is the first to be written by a woman. It felt like such a blow-the-doors-off-the-hinges idea of how to tell it.”
Then why the heck would you have a man write the script and a man direct the film. You paradoxical doofus.

Sally in Chicago • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

As a pedestrian moviegoer, my concern is AJ. She’s not known to open boxo unless it’s action. And will she want to do another “ancient” pic? Better that they go with a Sophie Marceau (European) or a woman of (slight) color who can act. Because in the end it all depends on the amount of money they throw at marketing and promo, not the star of the movie. AJ doesn’t guarantee a hit.

joe • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Sophie isn’t a bad choice , but she can’t draw a crowd that this would need

Sid • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

Naysayers also doubted True Grit and look at where it is. Rudin + Jolie + a good Helgeland script + Greengrass = a very compelling historical drama. I can’t see any other producer pulling this off, I can’t see any other actress playing Cleopatra. This sounds very exciting. They just need to work on providing moviegoers with the grand spectacles that Schiff describes in her book — the palaces, Cleopatra’s barge, the epic battles etc.

anon YMUS • on Jan 4, 2011 6:53 pm

–A soft porn Cleopatra with Jolie will be the perefect vehicle
for finishing the pre-programming of a thriving YOU genocidal ‘suicide culture’ into the mainstream.

It’s called emotive sequencing. It’s usually aimed at the
women because they know theiy’re most vulnerable to this
and that the man will follow them eventually.

The eugenics and collectivization crowd used Oprah, media
and movies to do something similiar, pre-programming
extermination of the unborn into the mainstream decades
ago.